Bombshell Findings Come As Justices Hear Radical Cases Backed By Their Own Billionaire Benefactors
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jeff Hauser, [email protected]
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. Marshals Service filed by ethics watchdog Fix the Court today found more than 200 previously unreported trips taken by Supreme Court justices from 2018 to 2022. Despite major recent reporting on Justice Clarence Thomas’ luxury travel, none of the Marshals Service documents (which include mention of then-Justice Kennedy’s travel to the Bohemian Grove billionaire retreat) mention Thomas by name. Fix the Court’s Gabe Roth has warned that Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts (whose name is also missing from the documents) may be “shielding [their] travel by solely availing themselves of security resources not subject to open records requests.”
In response to these FOIA revelations, Revolving Door Project Senior Researcher Vishal Shankar issued the following statement:
“These bombshell findings from Fix the Court underscore an increasingly undeniable fact: the Supreme Court’s right-wing justices have compromised the integrity of a critical public institution by accepting expensive handouts to enjoy secretive, luxurious lifestyles. These revelations come as the Court is hearing radical arguments attacking a functioning administrative state in a series of cases backed by the justices’ billionaire benefactors, including Charles Koch. We cannot sit and wait for Justice Thomas and others to yet again gut the regulatory state in order to enrich their powerful friends. Any justice who has accepted luxury gifts or travel from these oligarchs must recuse from every case in which a party or amicus brief filer is connected to one or more of these oligarchs.”
Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser issued the following statement:
“The pretense that we have a Supreme Court made up of nine above-reproach people doing their best free of corruption is utterly unsustainable. If right-wing members of Congress will block serious unpacking of the courts or even ethics reform, then the least we can expect of Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Durbin is that he fight to enforce the subpoenas his Committee belatedly issued last fall to Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo.”
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